by Chris Lynch
As for myself and my concentrated area of study, I am a committed undecided. Which I know doesn’t help things at all. So much of me was supposed to be saturated in football. Is this all there is now?
“All righty, Keir, I have been seriously looking forward to seeing you,” Fabian says as I enter the dining hall.
That is a greeting guaranteed to call me to attention, and I can’t think of anybody else who would possibly say it these days.
“You have? That can’t be good. If one of the high points of my day was seeing me, I would feel very, very sorry for myself.”
“You already do,” he says, shutting me right up and continuing on. “But we are not going to ruin date night by talking about that.”
I look around me every which way to see if anybody possibly might have heard, though the curious stares I’m getting in return probably have more to do with my bug-eyed, swivel-head gawking than anything else.
I do want to thump him when he calls it that. We do this once a week now, meet for dinner after classes, to break up the monotony. And he insists on saying that, at least once every time, even though he knows it makes me want to thump him. Because he knows, is truer, and because of course I never do thump him.
He’s plunked himself onto the seat across from me at the St. Lawrence Commons, the largest dining hall on campus, named for the patron saint of cooking, apparently, and more often referred to around here as LarryCom. He’s clearly bursting to elaborate on his peculiar opening statement by saying something even more bizarre.
“Well, go on then,” I say.
“What did you do today?” he says, grinning with the intensity of somebody who still believes that clowns only want to bring joy to children’s lives.
I wait for another clue, but impatience comes quick and sharp.
“Is that a gag question? Because I don’t even know where to go with that.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway. That’s my point, that whatever you were doing, I’m betting I was doing the exact same thing, at more or less the exact same time. What do you think of that?”
“What do I think? Well, since I’m very hungry, I’ll jump straight to the end. I think you’re nuts. Your behavior is unfathomable to me. You’re really happy and I don’t know why, and you’re bringing me into it and I don’t know why—”
“I spoke to Joyce on the phone today, for for-tee-five min-utes.”
“Yes, Fabian, you told me that. Remember? We crossed paths when I was on the way to Spanish and you were on the way to the Yurt. That’s perfect for you, by the way, a yurt. What the hell is in there, anyway?”
“It’s the Writing Center. But, Keir, I talked, on the phone, for for-tee-five minutes, to—”
“You told me. You were telling everybody, as far as I could tell.”
“She is just, sooooo wonderful, though. I’m still buzzing from it.”
“I’m happy for you, man, I really am. Good luck with that. Let me know how it goes.”
“Awww,” he says, and reaches over to give the back of my hand a fairly crisp slap. “Don’t be stupid. You’ve got nothing to worry about. All we talked about was you.”
“Really?”
“Of course. But that’s not the point. Stop making everything all about you. The point, dear roommate, is that at forty-five minutes I clocked up more time on the phone, talking to a girl, than all the rest of my phone time with girls, my whole life, combined.”
I’m happy for him and befuddled at the same time. None of which is helped by my being starving.
I go with the trusted fallback gesture that does the job when all else fails.
Double thumbs-up.
He doubles ’em up right back at me.
If everybody in LarryCom isn’t embarrassed for us right now, then the building is devoid of any human souls at all.
“And I’m buying,” Fabian says as we slide out of our seats. He’s got a leer on him, made worse by a wink—dear God, the wink—that comes close to making me forget he is Fabian Delmonico. He made buying dinner and talking to Joyce sound somehow fused together and all wrong.
“You are like hell,” I say.
We stand in front of the glass, staring at the entrees for a stupidly long time, since they don’t really change very much from one visit to the next. Chicken Cordon Bleu is swapped out for boneless breast of chicken in a creamy peppercorn sauce. But that just sounds to me as if they took the CCB and pulled it inside out and there you go, more or less, there’s your CCP.
Anyway, I always order the chicken. And I order it quickly. Fabian does things differently. So we stand, stare, linger in front of the entree display while he decides, and although there is no logjam of people being kept from their meals by my friend’s indecision, this always makes the six-foot-three scowling food-service guy seem personally angry. He stands on his side of the entree divide, in his paper hat and his lengthy white apron, arms folded and hands clutching an oversize serving fork and spoon set like nunchuks.
Fabian is never intimidated by this, because he never notices it. For me it’s like I get to come in on the most tension-packed part of the same martial arts movie over and over.
“Try the chicken,” I say. I know he hates chicken, ethically. It’s impossible for any human, even this guy, to hate chicken based on flavor or texture.
“I hate chicken,” he says.
“Right, I forgot,” I say, and start picking at my dish before it goes cold. The nunchuks man points a big warning fork at me, and I stop. This is almost exactly what “date night” is like every week. It’s pathetic, and it’s lame, and I’m starting to worry about what I would do without it.
“The whitefish?” Fabian asks me, or the guy behind the counter, or the crowd.
I’m the only one who answers, though. “I wouldn’t.”
I already know he is going to go for the tofu burger and green salad with sun-dried tomatoes and halloumi. I’m pretty sure the guy who’s going to have to serve it to him already knows too. But this needs to run its course, and where do any of us have to go anyhow?
“Was that your whole story back there?” I ask. “That’s what you were all excited about, telling me the same story about the same phone call that you already told me about six hours earlier?”
His nose is just about to make contact with the glass. “Shush,” he says.
“Shush? No, I won’t shush. You are boring the pants off me, my chicken with creamy peppercorn sauce is right now transforming itself back into its Cordon Bleu state just for something to do, and I think the least you could do is continue a conversation that you started, while we all wait for you to order the stupid tofu burger and green salad with sun-dried tomatoes and halloumi.”
For the first time in quite a while, he straightens up and looks at something other than the food. He looks at me.
“I don’t always get that.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“No way. I am not that predictable. Nor am I that lacking in imagination or spontaneity.”
“Uh-huh. What did you mean, you were doing the same thing I was doing at the same time today?”
He is completely distracted, trembling with the tension, squeezing his two fists tight as he stares at that tofu burger like nobody has ever stared before.
“How are the Swedish meatballs?” Fabian asks in such a fantastic, pathetic squeaky squeal that the guy behind the counter doesn’t even bother answering.
I scooch up right beside him, two little boys mesmerized by an aquarium, or a bakery.
“That is some unusually luscious-looking tofu, I have to admit,” I admit, even though I don’t at all have to.
“I do not need to get that burger,” he says.
“What were we doing the same today?” I ask. “Was it this? Maybe you were having some kind of psychic vision, and what you saw was the two of us both staring at a tofu burger together, when neither one of us was going to order it.”
“I’ll have the whitefish, please,” he says, and it’s
that voice again, only louder and more strangled and metallic, and it’s such a glorious thing that the scowl melts off the server’s face while he laughs and I laugh, and I put my arm around my nutty determined pal’s shoulders because, I guess, that’s what you do.
Fabian manages to have a little laugh at his own expense, even as the fish makes him wince already just by arriving on the counter.
I am paying for our food and drinks when he says, in a whole other voice, not the squealy one, not the excited happy one. It’s a voice that feels like it is just for us.
“I was going to make a joke,” he speaks, “about how we were doing the same thing because we both spent our afternoon concerned about nothing but you.”
I take my change and stare at him.
“Cold,” I say, walking by him. I didn’t say “untrue,” however.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he says. “So I’ll leave the joke out but still tell you that I spent the afternoon on you. First, talking to Joyce. Then Ray. Then, Keir, the athletic director’s office called. And the bursar’s office.”
It’s as if the entire big dining hall is controlled by one dimmer switch. And it’s dimming. I feel somewhat like I felt on a few occasions on the football field when I took an especially cracking shot to my head. It’s all a bit fuzzy, and I wonder for a few seconds if the darkness is going to keep on darkening and maybe I won’t make it back to our table first. “Keir, okay?” I hear Fabian as if he is half a mile behind me. “Keir, okay?”
And the answer to that is most definitely no. Until we do get within reach of our table.
And Joyce is sitting there. She is smiling her broad brilliance the entire width of the table, and the surrounding tables, until she relights the whole place and the answer becomes most definitely yes, I am okay.
silver lining mining
I have my head under the pillow because Joyce is trying to talk to me and spoil the bliss.
“But come on, Keir, you didn’t really think they were going to go on paying you a football scholarship for four years without you playing any football.”
“A half scholarship,” I say.
“A half scholarship. Still, the point remains the same. Take the pillow off your face, will you?”
Reluctantly, I do. “I traveled forever. I came such a long way to be here. It can’t just all fall apart so quickly.”
“You’re taking the total doomsayer position, Keir. Don’t let yourself get so down. They can’t be completely heartless. I cannot believe they would do that. Something can be worked out. Just go to the meeting, think positively, look for any potential bright side, and you will undoubtedly find one.”
She is propped up on her elbow, looking down at me still stuck to my pillow but at least no longer under it. I can’t help smiling as she smiles, but I have to shake my head in wonder at the same time.
For somebody who doesn’t want to be loved, she’s going about it very badly.
“You pretty much always do that, don’t you?” I say. “Bright side, bright side, relentlessly hopeful, always looking for it.”
“And always finding it,” she says triumphantly. “It’s something I got from my dad. He called it ‘Silver Lining Mining,’ and he always made me promise I would keep digging until I found it.”
I’m about to compliment her and her father when I think about it maybe more than I should.
“But then, he’s telling you to go mining, underground, for clouds. That doesn’t really work because silver lin—”
Her smile, my main source of light, evaporates.
“Get out,” she says.
“What? Wait. No, Joyce, don’t.”
I desperation-lunge for her arm as she tries to get away. I pull her back down onto the bed, intending to launch the fullest batch of apologies I can think of.
“Ow . . . ow! Stop it, Keir, let go!”
She looks furious and worried as she stares at her arm, my hand on it, and I’m panicked because I didn’t mean to hurt her at all.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Joyce, I swear. I was just playing.”
“Then let go,” she says.
I do, I let go, of course I do. But now I’m even more concerned about her getting away from me than when she was actually trying to. She sits on her side of the bed, looking at a red mark on her arm that isn’t so bad, will probably not even be there in ten minutes, but definitely should not be there now. I know that, I understand that.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Joyce. I’m really sorry. Really, really sorry.”
She nods, more like nodding to her arm, to that red mark, than to me. As if they are agreeing something.
“I said I’m sorry,” I say again. “And for what I said about the silver linings and your dad and all. It was just that, well, clouds are up in the sky, not—”
“My father,” she says, “is a lovely, gentle man. And a very happy one, I might add. So you might want to try following his advice rather than correcting it.” She has turned her full attention on me now in a way that almost makes me wish she’d go back to examining the arm.
“You’re right,” I say. “I have a habit of saying and doing . . . unhelpful things. I’m trying my best not to be like that anymore, but it’s turning out to be harder than I expected. Just like everything else is turning out to be harder than I expected.”
“Maybe you should start by doing something about those expectations,” she says.
“Well, as of right this minute, I don’t have any at all, so I guess that’s a start. Clean slate, clean break.”
I nod, look down at my hands, which are folded now pleadingly in my lap.
“You haven’t had much experience with girls, have you, Keir?”
“I guess it shows, then?”
“Everything shows eventually, if you start getting close to somebody.”
“Really?” I ask. “You really think that?”
“You look surprised, for an idea that’s not all that revolutionary. That’s a little bit cute. But you also look a little bit nervous, which is less cute.”
“No,” I say quickly, as if I can blow those thoughts out of the atmosphere the way a smoker tries to pretend he wasn’t just smoking. “I’m just thinking people can change, right? They grow, they learn, they evolve. They don’t wear signs of every place they’ve been, the people they’ve been with, things that they’ve grown out of, the thoughts they don’t have anymore.”
“You mean, just like resetting the clock at some point? You can’t do that.”
“Sure you can,” I say.
“Not really,” she says in that attractive way she has of saying everything with firm quiet confidence. It’s not altogether attractive to me just now.
I do not want to debate, but I do not want to agree.
“Time will tell, as they say,” I say, joining up with whoever they are.
“It will,” she says. “Without a doubt, it will.”
“Let’s just hope it doesn’t tell too much, right?” I say, chuckling and pointing her way like I’m some cheesy comic from the god-awful golden age of television.
The line dies the death it deserves.
“Hmmm,” she says, loaded. “How come you didn’t have girlfriends?”
I shrug. “Because I never felt like I wanted to try to have a girlfriend.”
“Mmmm,” she says thoughtfully. “Maybe you should have.”
We both sit there for several minutes, silently on either side of her bed. After the talking, this comes as a real blessing. I am acutely aware of such things now, gaps in my human file. Like the fact that I have never experienced a situation anything like this long silence with somebody. With a girl. On a bed.
She gets up abruptly, and out of reflex I do the same. I’m anxious about this until I see her looking at me in a softer way, and then giggling a little as I join her in making the bed.
“Are you finding me funny again?” I ask. “Because that would be outstanding.”
“Yes and no,” she says.
“Great. I’ll take that and quit while I’m ahead.”
“Listen, will you? Yes, I am finding you funny, but it’s something from before, not something now. When we were first together. I figured then you weren’t exactly a lady-killer or anything. I thought to myself, that is definitely not the underwear of a guy who thinks getting any action is a realistic possibility.”
I should be mortified. The fact that I’m not may be the strongest indicator yet that my reactions to social situations don’t line up the way they’re supposed to. Instead this makes my spirit rise.
“That’s me, Joyce. I have to say on that one, you got me exactly.”
“Yeah,” she says, and points. “And you’re still wearing them.”
But it is a solid lock, guaranteed, I never will again.
I can evolve.
“Remember,” Joyce says as she pushes me, forcefully, toward the door.
The time has gotten away from us and I have classes. Academics are my full-time occupation as of now, and dropping that ball would look especially bad when the time came to plead with the bursar for mercy.
“Remember to be positive, confident, and optimistic, Keir, and it will go better, you’ll see.”
“Look for the silver lining,” I say as she opens the door for me. And I say it with sincerity and nothing else.
She looks at me, unimpressed. I shouldn’t have gone back to that topic, that bad time back there.
“Also remember, a guy with no major and no direction shouldn’t try to tell the geology student about mining. Just like he shouldn’t question anybody’s father on what a good and happy man should say.”
The girl waves, and then the door snaps shut.
two hearts telling tales
I wouldn’t even be getting out of bed if he didn’t make me.
“Come on, now,” Fabian says. “You have to be on time, and on your game. You have to be sharp.” He’s snapping his fingers annoyingly but remarkably fast in front of my face.
“Why do I have to be all those things? And why do I have to be them to that rhythm you’re snapping at me?”